Music

AUX Top 10: April 2014

by AUX staff

Each month at AUX, our specialists in punk, metal, indie, hip hop, electronic, and pop vouch for their favourite releases of the month and have it out behind the scenes to bring you a trim, alphabetical, genre-representational list of the Top 10 Albums of the Month. Such fun!

Here were our favourite releases from April.

By: Jeremy Mersereau (JM), Tyler Munro (TM), Mark Teo (MT), Nicole Villeneuve (NV), and Aaron Zorgel (AZ)

 

The Both

The Both

(Super Ego)

A lot has happened since the mid-aughts. We started taking vitamins. We all joined theremin choirs. Our dogs all do puppy crossfit. When I look back to a time when The Postal Service’s Give Up was my AOTY three years running, I get wistful. The eponymous debut album by The Both brought me back to this heydey, not only because Ted Leo and Aimee Mann were shiny and new to me a decade ago, but because The Both was constructed in a manner not so dissimilar to Give Up. Their collaboration began as golden-voiced guitar smasher Ted Leo enjoyed a stint of shows opening for Portlandia housemaid Aimee Mann. On tour, they often collaborated on stage. The pair began exchanging fragments of songs remotely a la Ben and Jimmy, piecing together what would become a record that meets in the middle of their respective strengths. It’s a pop-sensible emotional juggernaut informed by a catalogue that’s decades deep. The spirit of indie-pop collaboration is strong in 2014, and this excites me. As I pry the Google Glass away from my eyes for the first time in weeks, I’m comforted by the fact that some things never change. (AZ)

Celestial Trax

Paroxysm EP

(Rinse)

Whether it’s Danny Brown tapping Scrufizzer for Old or the fact that Dizzee Rascal’s (apparently) been a constant presence in U.K. pop culture ever since Boy in da Corner, grime’s past and current impact on global electronic music is hard to dismiss. On his Paroxysm EP, London-born / New York-based producer Celestial Trax ramps up all of grime’s innate features: 140 bpm, menacing bass, brittle melodies and ghostly vocals are all present & accounted for, but it’s the way they’re deployed that takes the EP to the next level. Paroxysm lives up to its name: the six tracks jerk and flail around unpredictably, mostly in a grime framework, but then closer “A Cross” decides to go for broke and go full jungle. Celestial Trax might have only had a couple of Bandcamp self-releases under his belt until this point, but if he can keep putting out unstable percussive bombshells, the stars are the limit. Also the first track reminds me of Super Metroid, so there’s that. (JM)

Cloud Nothings

Here and Nowhere Else

(Carpark)

Dylan Baldi said Here and Nowhere Elsewas the result of having nothing to be angry about, which at first listen seems curious: While not defined by the insecurity and crises that made Attack On Memoryresonate, Cloud Nothings have never been more relentless. But the more you listen, the more you take that heavy, percussive backbone as confidence, not frustration. And while he’ll never be free from angst, Here and Nowhere Else has Baldi fully owning the Cloud Nothings sound. The results are staggering, at once blending the scene-shattering sound of the ’90s grunge scene with the no-frills, hook-heavy dynamics of the pop-punk scene that emerged years later.In turn, “I’m Not Part of Me” emerges as maybe the project’s most powerful song yet, while “Pattern Walks” keeps the album from being too to-the-point. The end result is concise, focused and, most importantly, incredibly fucking good. (TM)

Fear of Men

Loom

(Kanine)

Fear of Men’s exceptional debut is exactly the type of elegant indie-pop record that Slumberland would release—which is why it’s surprising that Kanine, the mammoth Williamsburg label behind Grizzly Bear, scooped the Brighton, U.K. outfit first. The foursome were borne of an art school project, and it shows: Built around Jessica Weiss’s icy, crystal-clear vocals and jangling guitars, Loom‘s songs balance decidedly academic existential ennui, lovely romantic despair, and whip-smart penmanship (to wit: Kanine’s band bio drops a blunt Morrissey comparison). The result is nothing short of striking—and Fear of Men’s music proves to be built around binaries: Weiss economically flits between vulnerable and bored, often within a single lyric. The songs, at first go, are DIY indie pop, but pad out their scaffolding with harp-like guitar leads, violins, and horns. And for A debut, it feels wonderfully mature, and while we’d pick our early standouts—the sophisticated “Seer,” the cascading “Waterfall,” the placid “Inside”—we suspect that Loom will be a grower. Luckily, it’s a shower, too. (MT)

Future

Honest

(Epic)

As much as it might pay the bills, nobody wants to be a hook guy. That’s something Future has been dealing with since he started the autotune renaissance on Y(where-the-fuck-did-he-go?)C’s 2011 smash, “Racks.” His second LP, Honest, is more evidence that Future carries the presence and style to deliver more than just a hot chorus. Even though the record is chock-full of monster beats and high-profile guest stars, Future owns every track. He’s mostly talking about selling dope and being awesome, but he repeatedly finds original ways to do it, implementing warbles and yells like only he can. Future can leave the hooks to the wave of clones that have popped up in the wake of his rise to focus on the promising songwriting he displays here. (CJ)

Menzingers

Rented World

(Epitaph)

I can’t be sure whether Rented World is better than On the Impossible Past, because one couldn’t exist without the other. But their latest is immediately bigger and, in turn, better for it. On their last album, Menzingers took the next step. Here, they’ve built upon it, trading in some of their dramatic flair in favour of tighter, bigger hooks and an absolutely massive guitar sound. Before, Greg Barnett and Tom Mayinsecurely sang about fucking up; here, they open the album not wanting to be assholes anymore. Even if they still are, it’s that proclamation that defines Rented World. Not stripped entirely of angst, Rented Worldsounds confident in it, and thatenergy that carries the rhythmic stop-and-start of “Bad Things” and the all-out oomph of “In Remission.” This is less punk for the working class than punk for the class looking for work; it’s filled with a sense of the uncertain, but also the sense that bigger things are coming. Because when you’re this good, they have to be.(TM)

Lockah

Yahoo or the Highway

(Donky Pitch)

To a certain segment of musicians and fans, when it comes to music production, “vintage” and “analog” automatically equal “better.” Yeah, old Junos and Rolands are cool and all, but it’s not like The KLF in ’88 wouldn’t have traded their 8kb samplers for Reaktor in a heartbeat. Fortunately, going by Yahoo or the Highway, Tom Banks doesn’t buy into any old-school gear fetishism; more than anything, it functions as a rebuke to that kind of thinking. Hyper-compressed tracks like “Some Velvet Evening” and “A Face Only Another Could Love” couldn’t exist as they do, noise-free and digitally pristine, without VSTs…and they also wouldn’t be as affecting. Every perfectly quantized clap, giant synth melody, and sample chop perfectly combines to elicit the desired effect. There’s a reason Lockah and contemporaries (Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, etc.) sound like the future: they use the technology of the present. Also no other record this month has an ode to my fav modern technological innovation: summer jorts. (JM)

Pains of Being Pure At Heart

Days of Abandon

(Yebo)

Kip Berman’s Pains of Being Pure At Heart project has always been for the nerds: His reverb-drenched eponymous debut was Berman’s ode to C86 and Flying Nun, outfitting his fragile melodies in a diffuse-glow shoegaze fog. Its follow-up, Belong, paid tribute to Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie‘s second stanza—behind arena-sized distortion lay naive, if charmingly wide-eyed, tales of adolescence. Days of Abandon, meanwhile, strips Pains down to their essential building blocks—then rebuilds the band in subtle, but effortlessly wonderful, ways. The additions of tasteful horn arrangements and A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Jen Goma—who takes on vocal duties on “Kelly” and “Life After Life”—give Pains a new look, but it’s the band’s melodies that sparkle: At turns coquettish, twinkling, and elegant, Berman’s flawless jangle-pop is becoming distinctively his. And it’s beginning to outshine his considerable influences. That’s no small feat, but the handclap-driven “Simple And Sure,” the languid “Beautiful You,” and the sprawling “Until the Sun Explodes” are canon-ready all-timers—they’re perfect additions to an increasingly perfect discography. Consider this one of 2014’s essential releases. (MT)

Sza

Z

(Top Dawg Entertainment)

Jersey-born Solana Rowe, better known as Top Dawg Entertainment’s first lady Sza, brings a unique quality to her clique. As her peers dominate the rap world (Kendrick, SHoolboy Q, and newcomer Isaiah Rashad all fly the flag) Sza’s tender rasp is the sole torchbearer to TDE’s R&B claim. From the attention-grabbing, Mac Miller-produced opener “Ur” to the album’s heart-wrenching conclusion “Omega,” it’s easy to see why a gang of spitters would trust Sza with that level of responsibility. The laidback, swirling sounds of Z position Rowe somewhere between Frank Ocean and Jhene Aiko, and the Top Dawg co-sign could be enough to propel her (and her label) to the next level. (AZ)

Todd Terje

It’s Album Time

(Olsen)

With time-tested hits like “Strandbar” and “Inspector Norse,” both which appear on It’s Album Time, Todd Terje proved his ability to craft disco-fied electro hits. The bigger question, then, surrounded the Norwegian producer’s ability to translate his penchant for playful, dancefloor-ready earworms into a full-length—and while It’s Album Time occasionally soars, it’s hardly a start-to-finish hit-maker. No matter, though, as even in its less consistent moments, Terje’s LP is balls-out fun. Call it the antidote to the anal-retentive electronic fare championed by Resident Advisor: Flying the cheesed-out disco flag proudly, It’s Album Time is gloriously goofy, somehow stitching together tropical sleaze, elevator muzak, tripped-out mariachi, ’50s detective-show slink, and Bryan Ferry cameos. Like the French clouns (see: Boby Lapointe, Leo Ferre, et al.) this kind of musical slapstick isn’t supposed to work, but somehow, it does—and when Terje lays into a virtuoso, polyrhythmic classic-to-be, like “Delorean Dynamite,” it’s even more satisfying. (MT)